Release Date: January 27th 2013
Published By: Allen & Unwin
Pages: 291
Goodreads: Add it to your reading list

Rating: 4 out of 5

Synopsis: The last thing Tegan remembers is the crack as the gun went off, intense pain, and everything fading to black. One hundred years later, she wakes up. A fast-paced near-future romance.

Sixteen-year-old Tegan is just like every other girl living in 2027 - she’s happiest when playing the guitar, she’s falling in love for the first time, and she’s joining her friends to protest the wrongs of the world: environmental collapse, social discrimination, and political injustice.

But on what should have been the best day of Tegan’s life, she dies - and wakes up a hundred years in the future, locked in a government facility with no idea what happened.

Tegan is the first person to be cryonically frozen and successfully revived, which makes her an instant celebrity - though all she wants is to rebuild some semblance of a normal life … including spending as much time as possible with musically gifted Abdi, even if he does seem to hate the sight of her. But the future isn’t all she hoped it would be, and when appalling secrets come to light, Tegan must make a choice: Does she keep her head down and survive, or fight for a better future.

Review: Finally a sci fi book based SO close to where I live! How exciting!!! When We Wake is based in Melbourne in the future, which I thought was fascinating.

Tegan attends a protest with her best friend Alex and her boyfriend Dalmar on the steps of Parliament where the Prime Minister is attending. A sniper tries to take out the PM, but accidentally hits Tegan killing her. Until she wakes up 100 years later from being cryogenically frozen.

Confused and in grief for her former life, Tegan is thrown into her new surroundings, instantly becomes infamous - both a celebrity and a target for hate groups at the same time. Her only source of sanity are the people she meets at her new school. Bethari, Joph and Abdi - who she originally thinks is Dalmar, he looks just like him.

Tegan uncovers a top secret Government operation that relates to her - yet no one has answers for her. With the help of her friends, she digs deeper - and then has to immediately go on the run.

I found Tegan to be really likable - she’s just your average teenage Australian girl. When she first woke up and found out what year it was and what had happened, you really felt for her - mourning the deaths of her boyfriend, best friend and family, that she felt she had just seen earlier that morning - ripped from her.

The storyline itself was completely original and enaging. I know I mentioned it earlier, but yay for Australian sci-fi! I loved this, and I found it heaps more relatable being a locally based book instead of some of the overseas based ones where you need to use your imagination even more. Having been to a lot of these places myself I could see it all happening like a movie in my mind, and I loved this!

Fantastically written, it was a nice quick read - I’ll definitely be looking to get my hands on the next book when it’s out! Book trailer is below - my only gripe with the trailer is the girl has an American accent - which so goes against everything in this book, being an Australian title. But alas, the rest of it was really good!

Quotes:

“No matter how much money he’d been offered or how many glittering stars had requested duets, he hadn’t sung for them.
But he’d sung for me.”

Trailer: